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  The deer’s eyes were already beginning to glaze as Skinner squatted beside it. His father’s knife looked like a bayonet in his young hand. Without knowing why, he placed his free hand atop the dying animal’s snout and stroked it gently. “Thank you,” he whispered as he slit the deer’s throat. Skinner then stood up and handed the knife back to his father.

  William Cade squatted beside the deer and began sawing away at its under- belly. “Look at this booger! He must weigh hundred-twenty, hundred-thirty pound, and dressed-out proper! We’ll be eatin’ venison all the way to Easter! And those points are gonna make one hell of a trophy, son!” With that, he reached into the animal’s steaming carcass and pulled out a length of intestine. He then stood up and motioned for Skinner to draw near.

  “That was a damn fine first kill, Skin,” he said proudly as he looped the slippery length of gut about the boy’s neck and smeared his cheeks with blood. “I’ve known men twice your age who couldn’t shoot that clean.”

  The Change was on Skinner so fast there was no time for him to realize what was happening. All he knew was that that he was suddenly gripped by a pain that went beyond the ability to be expressed by word or thought. It was like he was dying and being born at the same time. And along with the pain was an overpowering hunger that made his stomach feel like an empty bag. After that was darkness, save for the blood and screams and the tearing of flesh, and the vague memory of running low to the ground at speeds impossible for a boy crawling on his hands and knees.

  The next thing he knew, he was lying curled up naked on a pile of dead leaves, his knees pressed against his chest. He was covered in dried mud and was gnawing on what remained of a squirrel.

  “Skinner? It’s Mama. Can you hear me?” Somehow his mother was there, kneeling beside him. There were tears in her eyes and her face had suddenly become old and colorless. She removed her coat and wrapped it around his shivering form as she wrenched the half-eaten squirrel from his gore-caked hands. “We’ve got to get you back to the house before someone sees you.”

  He lay in bed for the next three days with a raging fever, barely recovering in time for his father’s funeral. When he awoke, he had no memory of what had happened. His mother insisted that he’d fallen ill on the first day of deer season and had not accompanied his father into the woods. And for eight years, he had believed her …

  Skinner woke up naked and shivering, curled in the fetal position. Someone was shaking him and asking him if he was okay. For a brief moment, he thought it was his mother. Then he recognized the voice.

  “Skinner! Answer me! Are you okay?”

  Skinner slowly raised his head to find Creighton kneeling over him. He heaved a sigh of relief: it had all been a bad dream all along. He looked around, expecting to be greeted by Los Lobos’ gray walls, but only saw open desert and sky instead.

  “Man, I thought I’d never catch up with you!” Creighton exclaimed.

  Real. It was all real.

  The realization struck Skinner like a closed fist. The attack in the showers, the rape, the transformation, the killing—it had all actually happened. He wanted to scream, but all that came out was a choked: “Ah. Ah. Ah.”

  “You all right, kid?” Creighton asked. “You don’t look so good.”

  Skinner’s reply was to noisily spewing forth the contents of his gut. Creighton nudged at the mess with his boot, and then bent over to retrieve a human finger.

  “You feel better now?” he asked as he wiped off the severed digit, removed the ring affixed to it.

  “How the hell am I ever supposed to ‘feel better’?” Skinner sputtered in disbelief. “I’m a murderer and a cannibal! I’m a monster!”

  “You’re being too hard on yourself. Way I see it, you’re a damn miracle. C’mon, Skin. We gotta get you some clothes before you catch your death. Then we gotta snag ourselves some wheels. They’re gonna be out lookin’ for all the chickens that flew the coop last night, if they ain’t already.”

  “Let ’em find me, then.”

  “You don’t want that, kid.”

  “You have no idea what the fuck I do and don’t wannnn—!” Before Skinner could finish he was overcome by another wave of nausea, doubling over with each racking heave.

  Creighton merely shook his head and picked up his friend as it he was a recalcitrant toddler to bed. “I don’t pretend to know everything, Skinner. But I’m pretty damn sure I know what’s better for you than you do, right now.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Dawn had yet to break as the pair of vans came to a halt at the foot of Bulldog Mesa, five miles south of Tucumcari. Before the dust had a chance to settle, the doors flew open and several figures piled out. The minivan’s sound system shattered the early morning silence with Cradle of Filth. Ripper, relieved to be free of the confines of the vehicle, danced in a circle in time with the music, yipping at the retreating moon. He kicked up clouds of dust with his scuffed combat boots and then threw himself onto the ground and rolled around in the dirt. Being the youngest member of the pack, he tended to be the most enthusiastic.

  Hew leaned against the side of the microbus, sipping beer from a forty-ounce bottle as he watched the drummer leap and jump about. Meanwhile, Sunder prowled the perimeter cautiously sniffing the wind, while Jag and Rend walked around to the cargo area.

  Jez slowly stretched, her arms lifted high over her head, and made sure her traveling companions saw her exposed midriff. “Any sign of intruders?”

  “I caught scent of a couple of coyotes and a puma, that’s about it,” Sunder replied.

  “Coyotes?” Jez frowned. “Are you sure about that?”

  “I know true coyote when I smell it,” Sunder spat.

  “I’m not saying you don’t, my pet. It’s just that—well, we are in the heart of enemy territory. We can’t be too careful … not after what happened to poor Growler back in Los Angeles. Isn’t that right?” she asked, fixing him with a hard, golden stare.

  Sunder grunted and rolled his shoulders in a surly shrug, but did not meet Jez’s gaze.

  “Stop squabbling and get ready!” Jag barked, tossing his hair out of his face with an angry shake of his head. “We’ve still got to make that sound check in Albuquerque!”

  “Yes, brother dear,” Jez replied with a roll of her eyes.

  Jag fished the keys to the back of the microbus from his hip pocket and unlocked the side doors. Rend crawled inside and a second later a man and woman, their hands cuffed behind their backs, were unceremoniously dumped onto the hard dirt.

  Jag squatted on his haunches and smirked as the prey struggled to roll over. “What’s the matter, Perry? Are my little restraining devices a bit too real for you?”

  The captive man tried to roll onto his back, but Jag put his boot on his neck and forced his face back into the dust.

  Perry spat dirt from his mouth and glared up at the musician looming over him. “What’s this mind-fuck control shit you’re trying to pull, huh, Jag? You said you and your weirdo sister wanted to play doubles. You didn’t say nothing about bondage and a gang-bang!”

  “Hey, you’re the one who came backstage in Amarillo,” Jag reminded him with a sneer. “You said you were into rough trade. Well, they don’t get any rougher’n me and my running buddies!”

  “Let me go, asshole!”

  “Don’t say anything else, Perry,” the woman pleaded. She was a bottle blonde in a black party dress that had lost her high-heels while gaining a nasty welt under her right eye. “He’s crazy. They’re all crazy.”

  “Shut up, Sheri!” Perry hissed, somehow making it seem like the whole situation was her fault.

  Jag knelt down and thrust his face into that of the terrified woman. “Crazy? Sweetheart, we’re a lot more complicated than that!” Rend tossed him a set of keys, which Jag caught in midair without even looking. “We’re not drug-crazed psycho-killers; we’re sporting types. And there’s no sport to be found in shooting fish in a barrel. So we’re going to give you two a fight
ing chance. We’re going to set you free and give you and Perry here a nice, long five minute start,” Jag explained as he quickly removed the handcuffs and stepped away.

  The captives sat up, exchanging uneasy looks as they massaged the circulation back into their wrists.

  “Don’t just sit there. The clock is ticking,” Jag grinned, exposing far too many teeth for a human mouth.

  Sheri scuttled backward on her heels and hands as Rend made a noise somewhere between agony and orgasm and dropped onto his knees, his spine twisting and bunching underneath his leather jacket. Perry lurched to his feet and grabbed Sheri by the wrist, dragging her behind him as he ran into the darkness.

  Ripper whined in anticipation of the hunt, hopping about on one foot, then the other, as he took off his boots. Sunder unbuckled the bondage straps that basically held his jeans together and joined Ripper in his dance, his penis growing rigid as he shifted. Hew tossed back his head as the Change came over him and gave voice to a lusty howl of exultant pain. Jez cried out as well, whipping her head back and forth as her bones restructured themselves, her shrieks quickly turning into a yowl of release.

  Jag shook out his cream-colored mane and leapt atop a nearby boulder. He was happy with the way the pack was working out. They might have their differences in human form, but once they shifted into their true skins the petty annoyances disappeared and they became a tightly-knit, fiercely loyal team.

  And he was the leader of the pack.

  “Come on, damn it! They’ll be after us in a minute!” Perry snapped.

  They were halfway up the side of a low hill, the face of which was studded with scrub and small outcroppings. Sheri leaned against one of the larger rocks, sobbing in pain. She wiped at her tears, smearing her mascara across her cheeks.

  “What are they?”

  “They’re not a black-metal band, that’s for fuckin’ certain!” he replied. “Now hurry up!”

  “I can’t! Look at my feet!”

  He didn’t have to as he’d seen the bloody footprints a quarter-mile back, and he had no doubt whatever was pursuing them had noticed them as well. Even if they somehow managed to survive their ordeal, Sheri would be crippled for life.

  “So what do you expect me to do? Carry you?” he snapped.

  She stared up at him with those big, stupid Bambi eyes of hers and began to whimper. Fine. He never asked her to fall in love with him in the first place.

  “Forget it!” he spat as he resumed his climb, scrabbling over the loose soil and gravel. “I’m not lugging you through the fucking foothills!”

  Sheri stared after him, open-mouthed. “That’s not funny, Perry! Come back!”

  Perry paused to shoot her a venomous glance over his shoulder. “I mean it, bitch! You’re on your own! I told you when we met I wasn’t into commitment! Nice knowin’ you, kid!”

  “Perry!” She tried to follow him, but the soles of her feet had been reduced to raw hamburger. After a couple of agonizing steps she fell and lay there in the dirt, weeping his name.

  Fuck her, Perry thought grimly. Everyone else has.

  As far as he was concerned, Sheri was just some screwed-up slut who was stupid and desperate enough to do whatever he told her to do, whether it was pay his rent or blow his friends. He didn’t owe her a god-damned thing. Let those creatures do whatever they wanted with her. It had nothing to do with him.

  “Bitches can be a real ball and chain, eh, Perry?” Jag’s voice came out of the thing squatting atop the hill above him, grinning down at him with eyes the color of whiskey. The thing looked like a wolf, but it was jointed wrong and wearing a black leather jacket with torn sleeves.

  Behind him he heard the sound of tearing fabric and what was either barking or laughter, followed by Sheri screaming. Perry refused to turn around to look.

  “Just take the girl!” he shouted at the creature leering at him. “I don’t care! Just let me go! I won’t tell anyone what happened out here!”

  The thing’s grin grew even wider and sharper than before. “Thank you for confirming my faith in human nature, Perry! Your offer is most generous, but I’m afraid I don’t need your permission to take the woman. Nor do the others. As for letting you go—well, I’m afraid we can’t oblige you. However, I did promise you a tag-team with my sister, didn’t I? Far be it from me to renege on a deal.”

  Perry wailed in horror as a hairy hand with talons painted red as blood clamped onto his shoulder.

  “So long!” Jag called out as he waved farewell to Perry as Jez dragged him, kicking and screaming, behind a nearby clump of bushes. “And thanks for coming out to the show!”

  Chapter Twelve

  “Try these on, skin. They look like they might fit you,” Creighton said, tossing a bundle of clothes at his friend’s bare feet.

  Skinner quickly pulled on the pair of blue jeans and shrugged into a plaid long-sleeved shirt. Both were somewhat loose on his wiry frame, but at least the pants stayed up without the aid of a belt.

  “You’ll have to wait before getting some boots, I’m afraid,” Creighton explained.

  “Where’d you get these?”

  “They were hangin’ on the line in someone’s back yard. Where th’ hell you think I got ’em? Now we’ve got to get ourselves some transportation …”

  “How are we going to manage that?”

  “That part’s easy,” Creighton laughed. “The rednecks around here always leave their front doors unlocked and the keys in the truck. A man can get himself some free pussy and a ride that way, if he has a mind to take it.”

  A half-hour later they came across a shack with a battered late-Seventies pickup that had a paint job comprised of equal parts primer and rust and the keys hanging from the ignition.

  “See? What’d I tell you?” asked Creighton as he slid behind the wheel.

  “I don’t know about this, Creighton,” Skinner said uneasily, eyeing the tarpaper shack. “It’s not like the guy who owns this truck is rich …”

  “He’s richer’n us ain’t he?” Creighton countered. “He’s got a truck and a house, don’t he?”

  “Well … yeah,” Skinner conceded.

  “And it ain’t like we’re taking his house, right?”

  “I guess so.”

  “See? You just got to look at things the right way, Skinner,” Creighton said as he turned the key in the ignition. “If you insist on lookin’ at life the wrong way, you’ll never end up anywhere but screwed!”

  As he threw the truck into gear, the front door of the shanty flew open and a middle-age man, dressed in long johns and a pair of cowboy boots and armed with a shotgun, charged into the front yard.

  “Come back with my truck, you god-damned son-of-a-bitch!” The shotgun thundered, peppering the passenger side with a spray of rock salt.

  “You’ll have to do better’n that, shit-kicker!” Creighton crowed, sending up a spray of dirt and gravel as they sped off in the stolen truck.

  Once they were safely away, Skinner started giggling so hard he nearly slid onto the floor of the wildly bouncing cab. “Did you see the look on that guy’s face?”

  “He looked like he just found a turd in the punch bowl!” Creighton laughed. That one was good for five minutes of guffaws. Finally, Creighton wiped at the tears at the corners of his eyes and gestured to the glove compartment. “Check that out, why don’t you? Maybe there’s a map or something …?”

  “There’s a flashlight … what looks like half a bologna sandwich … a Texaco map … and this,” Skinner said, pulling out a pistol.

  “All right!” Creighton exclaimed. “Now we’re shittin’ in high cotton and wipin’ with the top leaf! Any spare ammo with that?”

  “No, but it’s loaded.”

  “I’m not about to cuss my luck,” Creighton said. “Now we’ve got to find me some new duds. We sure as hell won’t get far with me wearin’ county orange.”

  A few miles farther down the road, Skinner caught sight of more laundry flapping in the dry dese
rt breeze. He hopped out of the truck and hurried across the dry, rocky ground and snatched an armload of clothes from the line.

  Creighton gave him a strange look out of the corner of his eye when he returned. “You made that dash like you were walking on a shag rug! Don’t your feet hurt?”

  Skinner blinked and looked down at his naked feet. He’d actually forgotten that he wasn’t wearing boots. “I reckon not,” he replied. He reached down and touched the soles of his feet and was surprised to discover they felt as rough and calloused as if he’d lived his entire life without shoes.

  Creighton laughed and shook his head in admiration. “I’ve gotta hand it to you, Skin. You’re really something!”

  “Yeah,” he frowned. “But what?”

  Creighton’s original plan was to stay on the back roads and head for Texas, where an old cellmate of his owned a ranch. They could lay low out there for a few weeks before hitting the road again. Skinner didn’t really care where they went, since he no longer had a home to return to or family to worry about.

  They were headed east on U.S. 70, near the New Mexico border, when Creighton noticed the needle on the fuel gauge was nearing ‘E.’ While both men were wearing stolen pants, neither had come equipped with a wallet.

  “We’re ridin’ on fumes, Skin. Keep an eye out for a gas station.”

  “Looks like we’re in luck,” Skinner said, pointing at a faded wooden sign nailed to a telephone pole that read LAST CHANCE FOR GAS BEFORE NEW MEXICO. “We’re shittin’ in tall cotton again, Skin!” Creighton grinned. “Hand me that gun.”

  Skinner’s smile faltered. “You’re not holding up a gas station, are you?”

  “You think Big Oil is gonna give us gas for this clunker out of the goodness of their heart?”

  “No …”

  “I ain’t gonna shoot no one, if that’s what you’re scared of,” Creighton assured him. “Now, hand me the gun.”

  The gas station was a tiny clapboard shack with a couple of old gas pumps, the type with the globes on top, stationed out front. A weather-beaten metal sign hanging from a curved pole advertised cold drinks, maps and rest rooms. A slat- ribbed yellow dog sat in the shade of the overhang, scratching itself.